While it is still being debated around the world what art really is and who it really is for, one artist laid it clear what art should not be. His name is Banksy and he thinks that art should not be prostituted by capitalism. So when one of his famous paintings got resold into an auction for $1.4 million, he devised a devious frame that shredded the painting automatically after it got sold to the highest bidder. Classic Banksy:
There is no denying that what he did will probably go down as one of the greatest art stunts ever. It is also not every day when one gets to troll hundreds of millionaires/billionaires in their own game. The said auction took place on October 5 in Sothebys where one millionaire could have laid his dirty hands on a creation of a rebel, until it got shredded. So how did Banksy do it? He went to Instagram to reveal his carefully planned performance art:
Turns out, Banksy customized the frame himself and secretly built in a portable shredder in the frame of the 2006 painting just in case it got sold for millions at an auction. It is worth noting that while the painting was worth millions in the bid, Banksy would not have gotten a single cent since it was an auction resale, not that Banksy would have wanted a piece of the cake, though.
However, some auction flipping experts claimed that Banksy’s stunt would only cause the value of the shredded painting to increase by about 50 percent more, meaning Banksy might have accidentally increased the value of said painting, despite its state. Still, it was a brilliant show, though he really could have used cross-shredded instead.
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